Tuesday's media lesson

Today's lesson was very good good because we went over over question 3 of the evaluation which is about media ownership and how to approach and answer the question properly

Media Studies Evaluation

1.       In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our opening sequence uses conventions common to many thrillers, for example our opening scene pan shot over letters which gives the viewers a numerous amount of ideas related to what the letters may be about and what they are for and why the word “failed” is written in big bold capital letters which builds up suspense in a lot of ways because it keeps the audience on their toes about what’s going to happen next. These effects used in suspense thrillers can be seen in the opening sequence of Identity 2003 directed by James Mangold which starts off with a pan of newspapers cut outs on a table in a dark room with only one form of light which comes from a lamp. I find that at the start of thrillers like those stated above they start off a story at what you see and hear in the beginning is always a key part to what happens in the next film or towards the end, also while the camera scrolls across the newspaper cut outs in Identity there is a soundtrack with a low tempo and pitch paying in the background which I think adds suspense because usually when something starts off slow it’s because they’re building up to something so I feel it gave me the audience something to look forward to, this to me is a key part in thrillers because it builds up the tension an makes the viewer feel like they have to know what happens next because the newspaper cut outs mean something. Lastly, the titles of thrillers are what make them what they are for example “identity” gives away many ideas of what the film might be about and gives audiences who like thrillers the chance to try and predict what the film may be about before they see and I believe that’s why in police shows that have murder they always show the victim dying in the beginning so that a “who did it” concept can come into the viewer’s mind because while they watch it they are trying to fiqure who did it before the show ends which is what keeps them interested and watching from beginning to end, an example of a detective/ cop show that does this is “Diagnosis Murder” which at the beginning of every episode shows someone getting killed and say around 10 minutes after that they reveal a list of suspects which could of done it and may make one person look like they done it so that you/I the viewer can put together a story in our minds of how they did it and when according the show. In our opening scene it appears that our challenge is going to be how were going to build up suspense in the film and made us have to rethink the initial idea and change the story a little bit because the title “Over the edge” can either tell a lot of stories or none at all so we will stick to the suspense thriller an may adjust it so that the audience create an who done it situation instead of making every key part in the opening sequence happen quickly because it I now clear to us that the idea of a suspense thriller is for people to create an idea in their mind of what’s going to happen and slowly build up to the idea of what’s going happen, how and why. So we had to rethink what the initial meaning of “Over the edge” was and how we can adjust it by adding in other ideas and we have done this by adding in another character at the end of the opening sequence which will keep on the edge of their seats and to this we may add an action match to our parallel edit and how to make it seem like it was part of the plan all along.

Last Wednesday filming

Last Wednesday me and my group went Wandsworth common to film down more of our opening sequence, Wednesdays filming went well because I got to film the remaining parts of my part in the opening so were nearly finish which is good because then well have more time to focus on the exam

Last week Tuesday media lesson

In Tuesday's media lesson our teacher informed plus of the evaluation that we will have to do on our film and how we should attempt answer them because some things that we say can be frowned upon an example of this " every thriller has a chasing sequence" which shouldn't be said because no one has seen very thrilled to know that this statement is true. We were also given had outs which gave us an insight on how to start of the questions when answering them of we have trouble.

Last week Fridays lesson

Im last weeks lesson we learnt about why films are released in the cinema and how they are promoted so that the audience that the film is for will be attracted to it. We also learnt why some cinema films are released in different countries before the UK and what the process is of getting films to cinemas across the globe and how complicated it is.

Last week Thursday lesson

In Thursdays lesson we went over what would be in the second part of the media exam and how to approach it. The second part of the exam will be similar to the English exam we were taught some key media aspects to help us to answer the questions properly.